The Future Belongs To The Adaptable . Redux

[Raúl Ilargi Meijer]

Detroit Publishing Co. Smallest News & Post Card Stand In New Orleans 1906 I thought it would be a good idea to occasionally do a re-run of an article
[See the full post at: The Future Belongs To The Adaptable . Redux]

[Ken Barrows]

I wish the question had been asked of Mr. Bernanke or would be asked of Mr. Obama:

Can you purchase an economic recovery with credit? Or, in the alternative, can total credit/debt expand 5% to 6% per year for the foreseeable future? It is a shame that journalists don’t seem to want to ask basic questions.

[Professorlocknload]

No free lunch? Who coulda node?

“But, for everything else, there’s mastercard”,,,

,,, I used to think to myself, when my entire crew would pile into their $30k 10 mpg trucks everyday at lunch time and drive bat out of hell 8 miles to a fast food, finishing up the last of the greasy french fries as they pulled onto the job just in time to go back to work. Humm, I used to kind of enjoy the old days sitting around talking with the guys over lunch on a lumber stack.

Remembering the days when we all brown bagged lunch every day, thought it a real treat to eat out once a month, knocked down multiple errands in one efficient loop with the single 12 year old family Jitney and patched up the old blue jeans to get another couple months out of them. Boots too, when we could find a good saddle maker or cobbler.

Sharpened our own hand saws, rebuilt the power saws, repaired the old ‘carro’ ourselves,,,’cause we had no choice.

We closed off rooms to save power, switched off lights when we left one, used rabbit ears on the 15 year old teevee to watch a movie once a week or so, squeezing in a Gunsmoke here and there, filling in the time with conversation and reading and sitting on the front porch shooting the breeze with the neighbors. (Still do when one of ’em ventures out of the hermetically sealed box to talk)

Damn, we even mowed our own lawns, sometimes with a push mower when the money was short of a power mower repair. Washed our own windows too. After work, some of us headed for the “side job” to earn enough extra to break even. Or pay down that 12% interest mortgage.

And for recreation, a walk down to the park with a loaf of french bread, some mortadella, cheese and a jug of cheap gallo with a couple water glasses. Or head down to the docks and con a fishing boat crew out of a crab, enticing them with a dozen homemade oatmeal cookies.

Guess it’s all relative. Some would think of the above as pleasures, others purgatory, I guess.

Might be some withdrawal symptoms on the horizon, or even blunt trauma, maybe?

[steve from virginia]

If course the recovery is paid for with debt, there is no other way.

The preceding boom was paid for with debt as it was the recovery from the preceding bust. The boom before that was fueled by debt and so was the boom before that.

Our money is debt how could booms or busts be anything else?

In the old days there was that first round of debt: a dozen post cards for fifteen cents. This was paid for with the second round of debt @ twenty cents then the third which paid for the second round @ thirty cents and what remained of the first. Followed by the fourth, fifth, sixth-seventh-eighth … on and on and on. “I pay with cash …” you cry! Not really, your boss borrows from his customers’ banks whose money is lent to your sellers’ banks depending on what it is you ‘buy’. The customers borrow from their bosses’ customers’ banks and so do their bosses. On and on it goes: the country-world is made up of daisy chains of loans, amounting now in 2014 to hundreds of trillions of dollars worth which will never, ever be repaid.

… and it all started with a dozen post cards.

Next thing we will talk about is the ‘productivity of industry’ … (chortle, chortle)

[Author]

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